find just a bit more than beyond frightening within their revealed realizations and implications. With half of this nation's citizens having taken the "Blue Pill" already, and more and more of our citizens actually wanting to swallow the pill also - With the 95% of our corporately controlled media's opportunistically dispensing of the pills to an ideologically blinded and eager populace, almost in exactly the same way as the Nationalists did to the German citizens of the mid to late 1930's - With the new aspect of the attack on, and the successful destruction of, both the balance of powers, and the reality-based environmental regulations, of this nation - With the "loyal opposition" in complete state of denial, or stunned marginalization, or in the fugue of a non-functioning depression. - I just feel the following items are timely.

"The hearing, to be held early in the New Year, will provide a good taste of Absurdist Theater.
Everyone knows how the play will end. Short of a new Abu Ghraib or a sudden flood of photos showing how the Americans used dogs and pigs to sexually assault Iraqi women, the Senators will confirm Gonzales for his new post."

"George Bush has purged the last of his father's senior advisers, handing over control to his neocon allies. Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. Those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk", and that capturing Baghdad was "mission accomplished", are rewarded."

"He recorded all the payroll taxes he paid into the system (including the matching amount from
his employer), tracked down the return the Social Security Trust Fund earned for each of the 45 years, and then compared the result with what he would have gotten had he been able to invest the same amount of payroll tax money over the same period in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (including dividends).

To his surprise, the Social Security investment won out: $261,372 versus $255,499, a difference
of $5,873.

"The pattern in cable news is to imitate Fox," said FAIR's Peter Hart. "But MSNBC is going beyond that-- it wants to outfox Fox by surpassing Fox's partisanship. Viewers deserve diverse opinions from the media, not an uninterrupted stream of right-wing spin."